Ghosts
Order 4444
A night-shift delivery driver picks up a lucrative order with a number he should never have called—and becomes the next victim of a five-year-old ghost's revenge.
License plate ending in 4444.
At exactly 2 AM, the last shutter of the late-night food stall slammed shut, and the entire street sank into dead silence. Only the cold northwest wind of winter rolled scattered dead leaves across the asphalt, whispering softly against the pavement. I rubbed my numb, frozen hands—my fingertips so stiff I could barely grip the scooter key. Just as I was about to call it a night and head home, the crowdsourced delivery app on my phone suddenly blared a crisp, cold mechanical female voice, echoing piercingly through the empty street:
"Transfer request from [Name]. Please check immediately."
I frowned and clicked my tongue. Normally I would have ignored it—orders transferred this late were either climbing fifteen floors in an old apartment building without an elevator, or destinations so remote not even a return trip could save them. Every night-shift courier knew: these orders were hot potatoes. But the notification rang again immediately. I glanced at the screen reluctantly, and my eyes went wide: a twenty-kilometer errand run, base fee plus tip, the total big enough to match what I'd earn in three full days of day shifts.
I laughed out loud despite myself, muttering internally: Who would be stupid enough to transfer out an order this lucrative? They must be out of their mind.
Orders that required no stairs, no awkward small talk with customers—these were gold to us night-shift riders. I gritted my teeth, pulled my helmet lower, twisted the throttle. The electric motor's hum rose sharply, carrying me straight into the thick, suffocating darkness beyond the city walls.
When the GPS led me to the pickup point, the warmth brought on by greed evaporated in an instant. This was wasteland beside an abandoned building materials market in the city's outskirts. Not a single streetlight in sight. Tall grass up to my waist swayed in the northwest wind, looking like countless human figures lurking in the shadows. Sand and gravel pinged against my helmet visor. Only a dusty old pickup truck sat alone in the center of the empty lot, its body nearly consumed by rust eating through the white paint, the license plate so blurred the numbers were unreadable. It sat in the darkness like a dead thing.
The motor's hum faded as I stopped. Silence pressed in, heavy and suffocating. I circled the truck shouting, "Hello? Pickup!" The only response was the wind whistling through the cracked windshield, sounding like someone crying softly inside. I pressed my face to the driver's window—the cab was completely empty, seat covers rotted through to reveal yellowed foam, the steering wheel coated in layers of rust, dust so thick on the dashboard I could write words in it. Clearly this thing had been abandoned for half a year or more, untouched by human hands.
Climbing onto the wheel well, I spotted it in the corner of the truck bed: a thick black plastic garbage bag, tightly sealed, its corners caked with dead grass and cold mud. I lifted it—not heavy. Through the bag I could feel a soft stack of yellow paper money and something hard, like a paper sheet. I photographed the truck bed and bag, then the cold wind immediately poured down my collar. I shivered violently, grabbed the bag, and twisted the throttle, racing toward the delivery address.
It was then I noticed something was wrong—the delivery address was a string of unpronounceable rural nonsense, not a single result on any map app. The navigation showed only a solitary pin floating in blank wilderness, no paved roads marked anywhere near it.
My heart hesitated. But my fingers brushed across the generous tip on the order screen, and I hardened my resolve. I'd already gone halfway—there was no reason to quit now. I clenched my teeth, twisted the throttle to the floor. The motor hummed with a heavy, strained sound as the scooter dove deeper into darkness.
The further I went, the lower my spirits sank. Smooth cement gave way to rutted dirt roads. The tires crashed over gravel and potholes, rattling my bones. The motor's hum shifted, straining against every bump, making a labored, dragging sound—as if something were holding the rear wheel back. The roadside weeds grew taller, nearly swallowing the handlebars. The last streetlight vanished. Even the scattered lights of distant villages disappeared. The world shrank to just the small cone of light from my headlight, and the ever-present motor hum in my ears—but that sound seemed half-swallowed by the darkness. The faster I went, the more hollow and insubstantial it felt.
The wind grew fiercer, rattling my visor. My breath fogged the mask repeatedly—I wiped it clear only for it to fog again, my vision growing worse by the second. I glanced at the rearview mirror several times, always sensing a shadow following my headlight. But when I looked back, there was only impenetrable black. I couldn't see the road behind me at all.
Then the navigation's mechanical female voice cut through a brief static hiss, speaking each word cold as ice, precise as a blade: "You have arrived near license plate ending in 4444. To call the customer, press confirm."
Four fours collided into my ears. My heart seized. An icy chill crawled up my spine. Instinctively, I squeezed the brake as hard as I could. The tire skidded a long mark on the slippery dirt road, screaming shrilly. The motor's hum cut off abruptly. The headlight's beam swung forward—and in that instant, every drop of blood in my body turned ice cold, as if someone had thrown me into an ice cellar.
There was no house. No courtyard. Not a single household in sight. Only a scattered expanse of uneven graves, crooked headstones jutting from the overgrown weeds. Some tombs had collapsed, revealing blackened coffin boards. Others bore tattered spirit-banner ribbons, rotting to rags, fluttering in the wind. This was an abandoned burial ground, gone wild for who knows how many years.
My mind went blank for several seconds. The first thought: twist the throttle and run. But my phone erupted with vibrations—it was the customer, ending in 4444, sending messages. My signal had dropped to a single bar of E-network, not enough to load a webpage, yet the messages came through one after another, smooth as silk, the screen blazing painfully bright:
"Go forward. Do you see the crooked locust tree?"
"Beneath the tree, the third gravestone from the left."
"Open the black plastic bag. Light the paper money inside first."
"There's also paper. When the flames catch, read every word on it aloud, without missing a single character."
My hands shook so badly I could barely grip the phone. Cold sweat dripped down my temples, instantly soaking through my thermal undershirt. My back felt like it had a block of ice pressed against it. Frantically, I opened the order page, mashed the cancel button—but the screen froze, completely unresponsive no matter how many times I tapped. I pulled up the phone number the customer had provided, ending in 4444, and dialed. The receiver first crackled with static, then a faint, ethereal female breathing, followed by a cold, emotionless mechanical voice: "Please enter your extension number, followed by the pound sign. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP... The number you have reached is not in service. Please check and try again."
Three tries. Three identical not-in-service recordings.
The wind suddenly gusted harder. The surrounding weeds rustled loudly, as if countless feet were walking through them, step by step, drawing closer to me. Then the electric scooter's headlight flickered twice, a harsh crackling sound—and went dark. Complete, absolute blackness pressed in on all sides. Only the phone screen remained, its glow illuminating my own ashen, sweat-soaked face.
The phone vibrated again. Same sender, ending in 4444. The words seemed to carry a chill: "Stop calling. No one will answer."
"You're already here. You can't leave until you finish speaking."
My legs turned to jelly. I slumped against the scooter, teeth chattering so hard I couldn't even cry. The sounds in the weeds drew nearer and nearer. I had no choice. Clenching my jaw, I switched on the phone's flashlight. A stark white beam swayed as I trembled, one unsteady step at a time, sliding toward the crooked locust tree.
Beneath the tree stood a gravestone,镶嵌with a black-and-white photo: a young woman, early twenties, delicate features, lips pressed together in a faint, knowing smile. The photo's edges had yellowed and grown brittle. The name carved into the stone read Lin Xia. Years of life: 2004-2021. Five years dead.
I crouched down. My fingers shaking so badly I couldn't untie the garbage bag's knot for half a minute. When my fingertips brushed the bag's icy surface, it felt like touching a block of ice. Inside: indeed a thick stack of yellow paper currency and a folded white paper. I pulled out a lighter, tried several times before it caught. The flame kept dying in the wind. Several times the fire singed my fingers, pain shooting up my arm, tears nearly spilling from my eyes. Finally, I got the paper money lit. Orange-red flames leaped and crackled, making the photo on the gravestone flicker between light and dark. I stared hard at that face—her eyes seemed to move, gazing back at me, unblinking.
The paper money burned with sharp crackling sounds. A cold, unnatural wind swirled the black ash around me in a column, yet not a whisper of the flame was extinguished. I unfolded the white paper. Black ink handwriting covered it, the pen pressure so heavy it tore through the paper in several places, the ink bleeding through to the other side. I gritted my teeth, swallowed the lump in my throat, and with a trembling voice, read aloud, word by word:
"A-Gui. I've waited five years for you. You pushed me off the cliff, stole the three-hundred-thousand down payment I'd saved for a house—you thought no one knew? My parents searched for you for five years. You hid for five years, not daring even to come apologize to me. Today you finally sent someone to speak for you. I'm right here. When will you come, and kneel before me?"
The last word left my lips. The wind stopped.
Silence fell instantly. No insects, no ambient noise—nothing but the soft crackle of the last embers in my hand. The wind lifted the ash, scattering it clean. At that exact moment, the electric scooter behind me let out a familiar, steady motor hum. The headlight blazed back to life, its stark white beam cutting through the darkness. I looked down at my phone: signal had instantly jumped to full bars. The order page returned to normal. Before I could even tap Confirm Delivery, the system弹出a notification: "Laughter-Crying Action Detection Task Incomplete. Please process promptly. Unresolved delays may affect your ability to receive orders."
I scrambled back to the scooter on all fours, twisted the throttle so hard the motor screamed—a strained, agonizing whine, as if something were clawing the rear wheel, yet also desperately trying to surge forward. I didn't dare look back. In the rearview mirror: only a churning black mass, as if hands were clawing up from the darkness along my tail.
I tore back to the city's edge, to the streetlights. Only when I saw the warm yellow glow of a 24-hour convenience store did I slam the brakes, sliding off the scooter and doubling over, retching. My soaked jacket clung to my body—the inner layers were so sweat-soaked I could wring water out of them. My hands gripping the handlebars still trembled uncontrollably. The motor continued humming at a low, eerie frequency, as if still carrying an invisible passenger.
Shaking, I opened the crowdsourced delivery account, desperate to see if that massive tip had arrived. But the transaction history was empty. The 2 AM order, the GPS route, the photos uploaded at pickup—all vanished without a trace. The app's records showed only the street where I'd closed up at the food stall, and the standard delivery fee. As if I had never taken that order, never driven those twenty kilometers of desolate darkness.
The next day, I immediately deactivated night-shift orders. I spent the morning at our usual rest point in the commercial district, looking for Old Zhou—a courier colleague known as the "living map." He'd been running night shifts for nearly six years, and nothing in the city outskirts was unknown to him.
I told him everything that had happened last night, start to finish. The plastic water bottle in his hand clattered to the ground. His face went ashen. A lit cigarette seared his fingers and he didn't even notice. Finally, in a hoarse voice, he spoke: "Four years ago, there really was a girl who died at those cliffs on the city outskirts. Her name was Lin Xia. She was driving in the mountains with a friend—the car went off the cliff. Ruled an accident. But her parents insisted it was a guy named A-Gui who was with her, that he was responsible. They made noise for half a year. In the end, no conclusion. On the day of the accident, Lin Xia was driving an identical white pickup truck. It was wrecked in the crash—totaled. It was towed to a scrapyard and crushed that same day. There's no way that truck could be sitting intact in some abandoned field."
My blood ran cold. I shakily recited the phone number, ending in 4444. Old Zhou's cigarette fell from his lips. His voice trembled uncontrollably: "That number... was exactly Lin Xia's number while she was alive. The day she died, her family disconnected it immediately. It's been a dead number for four years. There's absolutely no way anyone could be using it to send messages or place orders."
The blood throughout my body froze solid. Only then did the realization crash over me—the two "Transfer Requests" that night weren't some idiot foolishly giving away a high-paying order. They were the previous courier, desperately trying to pass the order along. And I—I was the one who grabbed the dead order.
From that day forward, I never accepted any night-shift orders after 1 AM. I never went near the wastelands of the city outskirts again. But some things, once touched, can never be shaken off.
Every time I ride at night, I inexplicably hear that motor humming—that same eerie tone. The rear seat is empty, yet it feels heavy, like someone sitting there. Sometimes, in the absolute silence of late night, my phone buzzes. It's not an order notification. It's a fuzzy recording of static, mixed with a faintly whispered female breath, pressed against the receiver: "A-Gui..."
I never dare look at navigation late at night anymore. I'm terrified that next time, it will smile coldly and call out in that same voice: "A-Gui..."
Later, Old Zhou told me: someone passing through that burial ground late at night claimed they saw it for themselves—beneath the crooked locust tree, in front of Lin Xia's gravestone, there was always a pile of paper money. Never lit. Never burned. Yet it had already turned to ash.
At exactly 2 AM, the last shutter of the late-night food stall slammed shut, and the entire street sank into dead silence. Only the cold northwest wind of winter rolled scattered dead leaves across the asphalt, whispering softly against the pavement. I rubbed my numb, frozen hands—my fingertips so stiff I could barely grip the scooter key. Just as I was about to call it a night and head home, the crowdsourced delivery app on my phone suddenly blared a crisp, cold mechanical female voice, echoing piercingly through the empty street:
"Transfer request from [Name]. Please check immediately."
I frowned and clicked my tongue. Normally I would have ignored it—orders transferred this late were either climbing fifteen floors in an old apartment building without an elevator, or destinations so remote not even a return trip could save them. Every night-shift courier knew: these orders were hot potatoes. But the notification rang again immediately. I glanced at the screen reluctantly, and my eyes went wide: a twenty-kilometer errand run, base fee plus tip, the total big enough to match what I'd earn in three full days of day shifts.
I laughed out loud despite myself, muttering internally: Who would be stupid enough to transfer out an order this lucrative? They must be out of their mind.
Orders that required no stairs, no awkward small talk with customers—these were gold to us night-shift riders. I gritted my teeth, pulled my helmet lower, twisted the throttle. The electric motor's hum rose sharply, carrying me straight into the thick, suffocating darkness beyond the city walls.
When the GPS led me to the pickup point, the warmth brought on by greed evaporated in an instant. This was wasteland beside an abandoned building materials market in the city's outskirts. Not a single streetlight in sight. Tall grass up to my waist swayed in the northwest wind, looking like countless human figures lurking in the shadows. Sand and gravel pinged against my helmet visor. Only a dusty old pickup truck sat alone in the center of the empty lot, its body nearly consumed by rust eating through the white paint, the license plate so blurred the numbers were unreadable. It sat in the darkness like a dead thing.
The motor's hum faded as I stopped. Silence pressed in, heavy and suffocating. I circled the truck shouting, "Hello? Pickup!" The only response was the wind whistling through the cracked windshield, sounding like someone crying softly inside. I pressed my face to the driver's window—the cab was completely empty, seat covers rotted through to reveal yellowed foam, the steering wheel coated in layers of rust, dust so thick on the dashboard I could write words in it. Clearly this thing had been abandoned for half a year or more, untouched by human hands.
Climbing onto the wheel well, I spotted it in the corner of the truck bed: a thick black plastic garbage bag, tightly sealed, its corners caked with dead grass and cold mud. I lifted it—not heavy. Through the bag I could feel a soft stack of yellow paper money and something hard, like a paper sheet. I photographed the truck bed and bag, then the cold wind immediately poured down my collar. I shivered violently, grabbed the bag, and twisted the throttle, racing toward the delivery address.
It was then I noticed something was wrong—the delivery address was a string of unpronounceable rural nonsense, not a single result on any map app. The navigation showed only a solitary pin floating in blank wilderness, no paved roads marked anywhere near it.
My heart hesitated. But my fingers brushed across the generous tip on the order screen, and I hardened my resolve. I'd already gone halfway—there was no reason to quit now. I clenched my teeth, twisted the throttle to the floor. The motor hummed with a heavy, strained sound as the scooter dove deeper into darkness.
The further I went, the lower my spirits sank. Smooth cement gave way to rutted dirt roads. The tires crashed over gravel and potholes, rattling my bones. The motor's hum shifted, straining against every bump, making a labored, dragging sound—as if something were holding the rear wheel back. The roadside weeds grew taller, nearly swallowing the handlebars. The last streetlight vanished. Even the scattered lights of distant villages disappeared. The world shrank to just the small cone of light from my headlight, and the ever-present motor hum in my ears—but that sound seemed half-swallowed by the darkness. The faster I went, the more hollow and insubstantial it felt.
The wind grew fiercer, rattling my visor. My breath fogged the mask repeatedly—I wiped it clear only for it to fog again, my vision growing worse by the second. I glanced at the rearview mirror several times, always sensing a shadow following my headlight. But when I looked back, there was only impenetrable black. I couldn't see the road behind me at all.
Then the navigation's mechanical female voice cut through a brief static hiss, speaking each word cold as ice, precise as a blade: "You have arrived near license plate ending in 4444. To call the customer, press confirm."
Four fours collided into my ears. My heart seized. An icy chill crawled up my spine. Instinctively, I squeezed the brake as hard as I could. The tire skidded a long mark on the slippery dirt road, screaming shrilly. The motor's hum cut off abruptly. The headlight's beam swung forward—and in that instant, every drop of blood in my body turned ice cold, as if someone had thrown me into an ice cellar.
There was no house. No courtyard. Not a single household in sight. Only a scattered expanse of uneven graves, crooked headstones jutting from the overgrown weeds. Some tombs had collapsed, revealing blackened coffin boards. Others bore tattered spirit-banner ribbons, rotting to rags, fluttering in the wind. This was an abandoned burial ground, gone wild for who knows how many years.
My mind went blank for several seconds. The first thought: twist the throttle and run. But my phone erupted with vibrations—it was the customer, ending in 4444, sending messages. My signal had dropped to a single bar of E-network, not enough to load a webpage, yet the messages came through one after another, smooth as silk, the screen blazing painfully bright:
"Go forward. Do you see the crooked locust tree?"
"Beneath the tree, the third gravestone from the left."
"Open the black plastic bag. Light the paper money inside first."
"There's also paper. When the flames catch, read every word on it aloud, without missing a single character."
My hands shook so badly I could barely grip the phone. Cold sweat dripped down my temples, instantly soaking through my thermal undershirt. My back felt like it had a block of ice pressed against it. Frantically, I opened the order page, mashed the cancel button—but the screen froze, completely unresponsive no matter how many times I tapped. I pulled up the phone number the customer had provided, ending in 4444, and dialed. The receiver first crackled with static, then a faint, ethereal female breathing, followed by a cold, emotionless mechanical voice: "Please enter your extension number, followed by the pound sign. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP... The number you have reached is not in service. Please check and try again."
Three tries. Three identical not-in-service recordings.
The wind suddenly gusted harder. The surrounding weeds rustled loudly, as if countless feet were walking through them, step by step, drawing closer to me. Then the electric scooter's headlight flickered twice, a harsh crackling sound—and went dark. Complete, absolute blackness pressed in on all sides. Only the phone screen remained, its glow illuminating my own ashen, sweat-soaked face.
The phone vibrated again. Same sender, ending in 4444. The words seemed to carry a chill: "Stop calling. No one will answer."
"You're already here. You can't leave until you finish speaking."
My legs turned to jelly. I slumped against the scooter, teeth chattering so hard I couldn't even cry. The sounds in the weeds drew nearer and nearer. I had no choice. Clenching my jaw, I switched on the phone's flashlight. A stark white beam swayed as I trembled, one unsteady step at a time, sliding toward the crooked locust tree.
Beneath the tree stood a gravestone,镶嵌with a black-and-white photo: a young woman, early twenties, delicate features, lips pressed together in a faint, knowing smile. The photo's edges had yellowed and grown brittle. The name carved into the stone read Lin Xia. Years of life: 2004-2021. Five years dead.
I crouched down. My fingers shaking so badly I couldn't untie the garbage bag's knot for half a minute. When my fingertips brushed the bag's icy surface, it felt like touching a block of ice. Inside: indeed a thick stack of yellow paper currency and a folded white paper. I pulled out a lighter, tried several times before it caught. The flame kept dying in the wind. Several times the fire singed my fingers, pain shooting up my arm, tears nearly spilling from my eyes. Finally, I got the paper money lit. Orange-red flames leaped and crackled, making the photo on the gravestone flicker between light and dark. I stared hard at that face—her eyes seemed to move, gazing back at me, unblinking.
The paper money burned with sharp crackling sounds. A cold, unnatural wind swirled the black ash around me in a column, yet not a whisper of the flame was extinguished. I unfolded the white paper. Black ink handwriting covered it, the pen pressure so heavy it tore through the paper in several places, the ink bleeding through to the other side. I gritted my teeth, swallowed the lump in my throat, and with a trembling voice, read aloud, word by word:
"A-Gui. I've waited five years for you. You pushed me off the cliff, stole the three-hundred-thousand down payment I'd saved for a house—you thought no one knew? My parents searched for you for five years. You hid for five years, not daring even to come apologize to me. Today you finally sent someone to speak for you. I'm right here. When will you come, and kneel before me?"
The last word left my lips. The wind stopped.
Silence fell instantly. No insects, no ambient noise—nothing but the soft crackle of the last embers in my hand. The wind lifted the ash, scattering it clean. At that exact moment, the electric scooter behind me let out a familiar, steady motor hum. The headlight blazed back to life, its stark white beam cutting through the darkness. I looked down at my phone: signal had instantly jumped to full bars. The order page returned to normal. Before I could even tap Confirm Delivery, the system弹出a notification: "Laughter-Crying Action Detection Task Incomplete. Please process promptly. Unresolved delays may affect your ability to receive orders."
I scrambled back to the scooter on all fours, twisted the throttle so hard the motor screamed—a strained, agonizing whine, as if something were clawing the rear wheel, yet also desperately trying to surge forward. I didn't dare look back. In the rearview mirror: only a churning black mass, as if hands were clawing up from the darkness along my tail.
I tore back to the city's edge, to the streetlights. Only when I saw the warm yellow glow of a 24-hour convenience store did I slam the brakes, sliding off the scooter and doubling over, retching. My soaked jacket clung to my body—the inner layers were so sweat-soaked I could wring water out of them. My hands gripping the handlebars still trembled uncontrollably. The motor continued humming at a low, eerie frequency, as if still carrying an invisible passenger.
Shaking, I opened the crowdsourced delivery account, desperate to see if that massive tip had arrived. But the transaction history was empty. The 2 AM order, the GPS route, the photos uploaded at pickup—all vanished without a trace. The app's records showed only the street where I'd closed up at the food stall, and the standard delivery fee. As if I had never taken that order, never driven those twenty kilometers of desolate darkness.
The next day, I immediately deactivated night-shift orders. I spent the morning at our usual rest point in the commercial district, looking for Old Zhou—a courier colleague known as the "living map." He'd been running night shifts for nearly six years, and nothing in the city outskirts was unknown to him.
I told him everything that had happened last night, start to finish. The plastic water bottle in his hand clattered to the ground. His face went ashen. A lit cigarette seared his fingers and he didn't even notice. Finally, in a hoarse voice, he spoke: "Four years ago, there really was a girl who died at those cliffs on the city outskirts. Her name was Lin Xia. She was driving in the mountains with a friend—the car went off the cliff. Ruled an accident. But her parents insisted it was a guy named A-Gui who was with her, that he was responsible. They made noise for half a year. In the end, no conclusion. On the day of the accident, Lin Xia was driving an identical white pickup truck. It was wrecked in the crash—totaled. It was towed to a scrapyard and crushed that same day. There's no way that truck could be sitting intact in some abandoned field."
My blood ran cold. I shakily recited the phone number, ending in 4444. Old Zhou's cigarette fell from his lips. His voice trembled uncontrollably: "That number... was exactly Lin Xia's number while she was alive. The day she died, her family disconnected it immediately. It's been a dead number for four years. There's absolutely no way anyone could be using it to send messages or place orders."
The blood throughout my body froze solid. Only then did the realization crash over me—the two "Transfer Requests" that night weren't some idiot foolishly giving away a high-paying order. They were the previous courier, desperately trying to pass the order along. And I—I was the one who grabbed the dead order.
From that day forward, I never accepted any night-shift orders after 1 AM. I never went near the wastelands of the city outskirts again. But some things, once touched, can never be shaken off.
Every time I ride at night, I inexplicably hear that motor humming—that same eerie tone. The rear seat is empty, yet it feels heavy, like someone sitting there. Sometimes, in the absolute silence of late night, my phone buzzes. It's not an order notification. It's a fuzzy recording of static, mixed with a faintly whispered female breath, pressed against the receiver: "A-Gui..."
I never dare look at navigation late at night anymore. I'm terrified that next time, it will smile coldly and call out in that same voice: "A-Gui..."
Later, Old Zhou told me: someone passing through that burial ground late at night claimed they saw it for themselves—beneath the crooked locust tree, in front of Lin Xia's gravestone, there was always a pile of paper money. Never lit. Never burned. Yet it had already turned to ash.